The Late Great Mike Leach Was A College Football Playoff Committee Hating Hipster
For a guy who regularly shared stories about how he used to accept packages from delivery drivers on his front porch fully naked, Mike Leach did -every once in a while- drop wisdom gold. Like this take on the college football committee, and he’s a billion percent correct. Why is college football the only sport in the world that has a panel of beauty pageant judges picking who the best teams are? Aren’t the games being played supposed to do that for us? They do in the NFL. They do in the NBA. Let me check MLB real quick. Yup, they do it there too. Hell, they even do it at every other level of college football. So why is it that college football runs their sport like American Idol? If winning literally every game you play can’t earn you a spot in a postseason tournament, then why don’t we have the committee select the four “best” teams at the beginning of the season. Especially since they know better than the literal outcomes of games.
Look, I’m no Alex Jones, but I will say it’s getting harder and harder to dispell the conspiracy that the CFB Playoff, which is partly owned by ESPN, failed to leave out a team from the SEC, which is also partly owned by ESPN, in a year where it could’ve been easy to do so without much uproar (the SEC was 7-9 against non-SEC teams this year and failed to produce an undefeated team). But instead, this blue haired selection committee chose to not include one of three Power 5 Conference teams that failed to lose a game this season.
But… but… what about their strength of schedule?! Ok. What about their strength of schedule? I never understood that argument. That’s like ripping on someone’s mansion for living in a shitty neighborhood. You can only control what you can control. All Florida State could do was win all of their games, and they did. They can’t control how good or bad their conference plays. Hell, they can’t even control their schedule. Aside from a few non-cons, which let’s be honest, they didn’t take the easy road by scheduling some cupcakes. They played teams like LSU and Florida and then took care of the only thing they could control.
Mike Leach may have had some kooky qualities, but dammit, did he have a brilliant mind.